Recently, the semiconductor industry has developed to an ultra-fine technique having a pattern of several to several tens nanometer size. Such ultrafine technique essentially needs effective lithographic techniques.
The typical lithographic technique includes providing a material layer on a semiconductor substrate; coating a photoresist layer thereon; exposing and developing the same to provide a photoresist pattern; and etching the material layer using the photoresist pattern as a mask.
Nowadays, according to small-sizing the pattern to be formed, it is difficult to provide a fine pattern having an excellent profile by only above-mentioned typical lithographic technique. Accordingly, a layer, called a hardmask layer, may be formed between the material layer and the photoresist layer to provide a fine pattern.
The hardmask layer plays a role of an intermediate layer for transferring the fine pattern of photoresist to the material layer through the selective etching process. Accordingly, the hardmask layer is required to have characteristics such as heat resistance and etch resistance, and the like to be tolerated during the multiple etching processes.
On the other hand, it has been recently suggested to form a hardmask layer by a spin-on coating method instead of the chemical vapor deposition. The spin-on coating method is easy to perform and may also improve gap-fill characteristics and planarization characteristics. The spin-on coating method may use the hardmask composition having solubility for a solvent.
However, the solubility and the characteristics required for the hardmask layer have the relationship against to each other, so a hardmask composition satisfying both is needed.